Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: What Jeffrey my Epstein's This is Behind the Bastards, a
Speaker 2: podcast about the very worst people in all of history.
Speaker 3: And as you may have guessed.
Speaker 2: From my completely original introduction that I definitely haven't done before,
Speaker 2: we are back talking about Jepstein. Jeffrey Epstein, the big
Speaker 2: ezy what because he's not called by anyone. Yes, I
Speaker 2: love that we're getting into the Epstein Files. That's that's
Speaker 2: what these episodes are going to be. With my good
Speaker 2: friend and colleague Andrew T. Yeah, are you a fan
Speaker 2: of Jeffrey Epstein?
Speaker 3: How do you feel about the guy?
Speaker 4: I mean, uh, he's he's in a photo with he
Speaker 4: is so many people. Just he's on the ground with
Speaker 4: so many of my faves, so right, right, judge a
Speaker 4: man by his friends. I mean, he's got great friends,
Speaker 4: you know, obviously, like half the New York Times is
Speaker 4: his buddy. You know, I got to come clean up
Speaker 4: at the top. I show up many times in the
Speaker 4: Epstein Files. If you search for Robert Evans, you will
Speaker 4: find my name in there a lot. You know, I
Speaker 4: have to assume that that I was up to up
Speaker 4: to no good there, and I apologize, you know, after
Speaker 4: producing the godfather. A lot of stuff got to my head,
Speaker 4: you know. I think I just kind of let fame
Speaker 4: and money drive me a little crazy. You know. That's
Speaker 4: the great thing about you, Robert, is somehow you're going
Speaker 4: to be known as Robert Evans Comma, somehow the lesser scumbag. Yeah, somehow,
Speaker 4: the less evil Robert Evans. Yeah, somehow, the Robert Evans
Speaker 4: who's done the last less drugs too. Yeah. I think
Speaker 4: we can't find me in.
Speaker 1: The Epstein files, and you won't find me saying anything
Speaker 1: nice about the guy.
Speaker 2: So no, this is not about that. We're certainly not
Speaker 2: saying anything nice about the guy. And no, the problem is,
Speaker 2: obviously we've got a shitload more Epstein files. Right right
Speaker 2: at the top, there were a bunch released in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five, and then right at the top of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty six, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that even
Speaker 2: more were going.
Speaker 3: To be released.
Speaker 2: Specifically, he revealed that the Justice Department was releasing three
Speaker 2: million new pages of files related to the Epstein case.
Speaker 2: Such a vast quantity of information can't be digested in
Speaker 2: short order, and we haven't discovered all of the secrets
Speaker 2: in this tranch of files or in the last the
Speaker 2: stuff that came out last year. People are still picking
Speaker 2: stuff out right, which is why, because it's going to
Speaker 2: take so much time to find everything that's noteworthy inside
Speaker 2: these files. Todd Blanche sought to set expectations prior to
Speaker 2: the file dump, so he insisted to the world that
Speaker 2: the only hang up and getting these files out. The
Speaker 2: only thing that had delayed them past the amount of
Speaker 2: time they were legally supposed to be put up in
Speaker 2: was that the Justice Department had to scan them to
Speaker 2: see if Epstein had said anything that criminally implicated President Trump.
Speaker 2: Older files certainly had things that could be seen as
Speaker 2: implicating Trump. Releases in twenty twenty five included a twenty
Speaker 2: twenty email from a federal prosecutor stating Trump had been
Speaker 2: a passenger on the Lolita Express a minimum of eight
Speaker 2: times between nineteen ninety three and nineteen ninety six. On
Speaker 2: one trip, the three listed passengers were Trump, Epstein, and
Speaker 2: a twenty year old female name redacted. So like he
Speaker 2: is certainly implicated in a lot. You've seen probably the
Speaker 2: birthday letter in the shape of a naked woman signed
Speaker 2: by Trump for Epstein, right, you've probably seen. There's a
Speaker 2: photo of Epstein and a young girl with a giant
Speaker 2: check from Donald Trump. You've certainly heard the rumors that
Speaker 2: he and Bill Clinton may have engaged in some oral
Speaker 2: sex together. That was almost certainly Jeffrey Epstein joking around
Speaker 2: rather than something that literally happened. But a lot of
Speaker 2: crazy shit is in these files that literally happened. And
Speaker 2: probably the single worst piece of data I have seen
Speaker 2: from an implicating the president point of view is this
Speaker 2: paragraph from an FBI interview with a victim of Epstein's.
Speaker 2: I'll read it in a second, but it's particularly funny
Speaker 2: when you pair it with this statement from Todd Blanch.
Speaker 2: So here's Todd Blanche first. In none of these communications,
Speaker 2: even when doing his best disparage President Trump, did Epstein
Speaker 2: suggest President Trump had done anything criminal or had any
Speaker 2: inappropriate contact with any of his victims. Now, oh, going
Speaker 2: to read to you a quote from the FBI. During
Speaker 2: one of Jane Doe's encounters with Epstein, he took her
Speaker 2: to mar A Lago, where he introduced her to its owner,
Speaker 2: Donald J.
Speaker 3: Trump.
Speaker 2: Introducing fourteen year old dough to Donald J. Trump, Epstein
Speaker 2: elbowed Trump playfully, asking him referring to Doe, this is
Speaker 2: a good one, right, Trump smiled and nodded an agreement.
Speaker 2: They both chuckled, and Doe felt uncomfortable, but at the
Speaker 2: time was too young to understand why. Yeah, that's hideous. Ew,
Speaker 2: that's just disgusting.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say you a lot on these episodes.
Speaker 2: But Ew.
Speaker 4: The thing that I don't understand is, like, what did
Speaker 4: Trump think was going to happen when these came out?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 4: Was he just riffing? Did he think that someone was
Speaker 4: actually going to go and falsify and redact shit? I
Speaker 4: think he.
Speaker 2: Thought, first off, I can just brute force this not
Speaker 2: getting released. It hadn't been earlier. Yeah, And I'm sure
Speaker 2: when it became inevident, when it became clear that like
Speaker 2: they literally could not politically afford not to release these,
Speaker 2: like not even just the legal stuff, Like their base
Speaker 2: would have flipped out if they hadn't released this stuff
Speaker 2: because of how central the Epstein files are to the
Speaker 2: conspiratorial right too. I think at that point he just
Speaker 2: probably and probably was reassured by his people. Look, man,
Speaker 2: you literally could shoot a guy in Central Park and
Speaker 2: your bass will stand behind you.
Speaker 3: You'll be okay.
Speaker 2: And maybe he will, you know, I guess it's definitely
Speaker 2: hurting him, but not that we're.
Speaker 4: In the midst we're in the midst of seeing. But
Speaker 4: it is like I'm just like, we'll see you knew
Speaker 4: what was going to be a passing, right, Like like
Speaker 4: what like why would you stoke this? Because because that's
Speaker 4: the thing is he did continue to stoke this flyer
Speaker 4: and it's like he sure did because.
Speaker 2: He'd be able to have more control. They they it's
Speaker 2: also very sloppy. They very sloppily tried. Like one person
Speaker 2: that I saw on Blue Sky pointed out there's a
Speaker 2: lot of don'ts that are censored in the files, like
Speaker 2: the word don't. And the only reason for that is
Speaker 2: because like someone just went through and did like automatically
Speaker 2: any use of like dawn t like they just starting
Speaker 2: right Like there's stuff like there's a lot of really
Speaker 2: like lazy attempts to and they've they've uploaded some stuff
Speaker 2: and then pulled it back down. There's all sorts of
Speaker 2: stuff like that, right I I think in terms of
Speaker 2: the stuff that is most powerful to me, right it
Speaker 2: is that the quote I just read you in part
Speaker 2: if you've seen there's footage, Sophie'll play it right now.
Speaker 2: There's some NBC archival footage of a nineteen ninety two
Speaker 2: party where Trump and Epstein hung out together. There's a
Speaker 2: decent chance you've seen it online, and it's just the two.
Speaker 2: You can't even hear what they're saying, really, but the
Speaker 2: two are like pointing it and talking about women and
Speaker 2: like laughing to each other. And the body language in
Speaker 2: that scene, which which should be playing right now, if
Speaker 2: you read back over that statement with like Epstein elbowing
Speaker 2: Trump and being like this is a good one, right,
Speaker 2: and Trump smiled and nodding and they both laughing, it's
Speaker 2: the same, Like you can you can see a moment
Speaker 2: like that between them in this footage. Like that's part
Speaker 2: of why I believe this is literally true, Like is
Speaker 2: because we have other evidence of them hanging out together
Speaker 2: that sounds exactly like it.
Speaker 4: It's doing shit like that. Well, because it's also just
Speaker 4: like it's just a pedophile frat house, right right. It's
Speaker 4: just like when you like kind of get the tenor
Speaker 4: of it, none of it's like surprising. Really you're like, yeah,
Speaker 4: of course these people act like this. I guess, like
Speaker 4: the the amount of emails they sent is a little surprising. Frankly.
Speaker 2: You get at also, by the way, why I have
Speaker 2: focused the episodes the way I focused them, because as
Speaker 2: you've noted, there's a ton of I mean, there's there's
Speaker 2: there's so much here, right for one thing like that,
Speaker 2: you could I could do episodes all year on this
Speaker 2: and not run out of content. There's so much fucking
Speaker 2: shit in here, but a lot of it is just okay. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the pedophiles told another gross pedophile joke. He and his
Speaker 2: pedophile friends continue to be nasty with each other. That's
Speaker 2: not surprising. What's really surprising to me is the number
Speaker 2: of things that Epstein has been revealed to have been
Speaker 2: central to that created the modern world everywhere. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: made a post earlier that was a little inaccurate. The
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein Jeffrey Epstein was the first first domino for
Speaker 2: fucking uh like cryptocurrency for like for like the modern
Speaker 2: like the cryptocurrency in like its modern attached to the
Speaker 2: far right sense.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: He was like a starting domino for gamer game is
Speaker 2: starting domino for the fucking two thousand and eight financial crash. Like,
Speaker 2: there's all sorts of shit and he's he's also deeply
Speaker 2: implicated in like the growth and birth of right wing media,
Speaker 2: right including sharing a lot of like fucking really kind
Speaker 2: of fringe at the time far right like podcasts and
Speaker 2: articles with his with his friends, like he was he
Speaker 2: helped create the modern far right, and he helped ruin
Speaker 2: the Internet in a lot of ways. And there's a
Speaker 2: good Garbage Day column on that. But we're going to
Speaker 2: be focusing on how Epstein built the modern world, or
Speaker 2: helped to build the modern world, like his influence on
Speaker 2: particularly development of the far right, and like uh cryptocurrency
Speaker 2: and the far like the online media ecosystem that has
Speaker 2: like fed into the far right, particularly four Chan. That's
Speaker 2: what these episodes are about. It's like how Jeffrey Epstein
Speaker 2: built the worst parts of the modern world because he
Speaker 2: was shut he was even more influential than we knew.
Speaker 2: There's been a lot that that surprised me in these files,
Speaker 2: like stuff that I just would not have guessed was
Speaker 2: the case.
Speaker 4: Do you think though, there's an element of just sort
Speaker 4: of like right place, right time, Like he's talking about
Speaker 4: these things in a way that is like but like
Speaker 4: kind of like, yes, we're looking at the private communications
Speaker 4: of billionaires and right far right, and I mean, I'm
Speaker 4: just like, I'm like, there's probably a world where it's
Speaker 4: all like this. Maybe throughout history, like.
Speaker 2: Reagan's letters, I think that you were. Throughout history there
Speaker 2: have always been like this has always been how a
Speaker 2: lot of things have gotten done. A lot of the
Speaker 2: sausage is made like politically, like like this is how
Speaker 2: in every society you have groups of elites who are
Speaker 2: all creepy friends and are all probably having creepy sex,
Speaker 2: often with underage people, and you know, through their like
Speaker 2: petty bigotries and rivalries and whatnot, making policy that affects
Speaker 2: millions and millions of lives. Right, That's that's always been
Speaker 2: the case. And it you know, when I said that
Speaker 2: Jeffrey was the first Domino, that's not entirely accurate for
Speaker 2: any of those things, except maybe for gamer Gate. But
Speaker 2: he was like an early Domino in all of these things.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, it's one of these like you have
Speaker 2: to you have to be I don't want to frame
Speaker 2: it as like Epstein started any of these things, or
Speaker 2: was the only idea he was the guy who created
Speaker 2: micro transactions in video games.
Speaker 3: That's not really accurate.
Speaker 2: But he heavily influenced the development of micro transactions in
Speaker 2: video games because he was talking up the idea and
Speaker 2: pushing it to a lot of influential friends in the industry.
Speaker 2: And that's generally how stuff worked with Epstein, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: with the exception of the financial crash, stuff is is
Speaker 2: a little wonk ear.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because like when you list those things that
Speaker 1: my my like, without knowing that this was the topic,
Speaker 1: I instantly think like Steve Bannon as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was close with Bannon as talking.
Speaker 1: About Yeah, and so it's just like motherfucker was everywhere.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Just like the question to me is like, is
Speaker 4: the causality, like do just being a pedophile make you
Speaker 4: more of a make turn you into a right wing
Speaker 4: freak or just being a right wing freak turn you
Speaker 4: into a pedophile?
Speaker 2: Well, this is and we'll talk about it. I kind
Speaker 2: of what happened what.
Speaker 1: I said, chicken or the egg?
Speaker 2: Sorry, okay, Yeah, I kind of think when it comes
Speaker 2: to answering that question, I think Epstein, like Trump, like
Speaker 2: a lot of these guys, was socially someone that you
Speaker 2: would have pegged as more of like a liberal or
Speaker 2: progressive based on the causes.
Speaker 3: He's supporting the people he.
Speaker 2: Hung out with most of his life, but his primarily
Speaker 2: guy who's interested in his own personal power and wealth.
Speaker 2: And a lot of his right word turn came after
Speaker 2: his conviction and his jail sentence in like two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight, two thousand and nine, and after that he's
Speaker 2: increasingly angry and increasingly reactionary. And that's a lot of
Speaker 2: these guys get on the right. He's a big cancel
Speaker 2: culture guy. He's freaked out by me too, right, So
Speaker 2: that's a big factor in why he goes far right.
Speaker 2: I don't think him being a pedophile has much ideologically
Speaker 2: other than unfortunately, as we've seen, a lot of powerful
Speaker 2: men want to have sex with fifteen and sixteen year
Speaker 2: old girls, right, And that's not a left or a
Speaker 2: right wing thing, you know, it's not even just a
Speaker 2: politics thing. Fucking priests and cops and whatnot, all like
Speaker 2: r you know, it is all powerful people or less kids,
Speaker 2: you know sometimes but in part because if you want
Speaker 2: to molest kids, getting into a position of power makes
Speaker 2: it a lot easier to do that.
Speaker 3: Way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's one of the incidental like, yeah, if
Speaker 4: that's your goal, power is a good way to achieve it.
Speaker 4: Power also achieves other things. But yeah, right, that's probably
Speaker 4: the logical funnel.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know when it comes to because we'll
Speaker 2: be talking a little bit about Trump in these episodes,
Speaker 2: but he's not. It's more how Epstein helped like build
Speaker 2: and prepare like the media ecosystem and the cultural like
Speaker 2: ideological environment to make Trump's presidency possible. Like his contribution
Speaker 2: to that is more interesting to me in these episodes
Speaker 2: than like what Trump was involved in with Epstein, which
Speaker 2: is why I kind of started the episode by pointing
Speaker 2: that out. But I'm not gonna We're not gonna be
Speaker 2: covering that heavily because you can find that in a
Speaker 2: bunch of places, and anyone who's not an idiot knows
Speaker 2: that Donald Trump was deeply involved in Epstein. And if
Speaker 2: he didn't have underage girls Epstein was trafficking, then he
Speaker 2: had sex with adults that Epstein was illegally trafficking, right,
Speaker 2: Like like I don't know who he had sex with,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't good, right. Yeah, So yeah, these episodes
Speaker 2: are going to be about what we've learned about Jeffrey
Speaker 2: Epstein and everyone else, because the horrifying truth hidden at
Speaker 2: the center of the revealed Epstein files is that Jeffrey
Speaker 2: wasn't just a pedophile financier who knew the secrets of
Speaker 2: the elite. He was a player himself, and he actively
Speaker 2: used his influence in clout and money to shift the
Speaker 2: world in new directions. And despite his public persona as
Speaker 2: a philanthropist who hung out with scientists and philosophers and
Speaker 2: a lot of left coded kinds of people, he spent
Speaker 2: the last decade of his life building support for a
Speaker 2: global right wing power grab with people like Peter Teel
Speaker 2: and Steve Bannon. And this power grab succeeded. It left
Speaker 2: him behind, but he lived to see it come to fruition,
Speaker 2: which you can tell was very frustrating to him that
Speaker 2: like I helped, I helped make this all possible, and
Speaker 2: yet I'm I'm not going to benefit from the impunity
Speaker 2: that I can see going to other people. So I
Speaker 2: went back and forth as to where we were going
Speaker 2: to start with these episodes. Which of the reveals do
Speaker 2: we begin with? Because there's so many players, so many
Speaker 2: different people who were important and implicated with Epstein, that
Speaker 2: it's impossible to not leave some stuff out. But I
Speaker 2: think The story I want to tell this week is
Speaker 2: going to flow best if I start with the tale
Speaker 2: of a little feller named Brock Pierce. Have you heard
Speaker 2: of Brock?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 4: No, no, okay, good good God, You're gonna You're gonna
Speaker 4: recognize him in a second here.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, you really are you really really?
Speaker 2: Born November fourteenth, nineteen eighty, Brock Jeffrey Pierce another Jeffrey
Speaker 2: came into this world in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the city even
Speaker 2: now in the crosshairs of a fascist movement that at
Speaker 2: least partly exists through the consequences of Brock's actions. There
Speaker 2: was little sign of this in his early life. However,
Speaker 2: his parents seem to want him to have a career
Speaker 2: in Hollywood. It's a clear to me how much they
Speaker 2: pushed their son and how much he genuinely wanted that
Speaker 2: for himself. Pierce has described himself as a simple hockey
Speaker 2: loving boy from Minnesota. When at age three, he started
Speaker 2: acting in commercials. This wound up building to his big shot,
Speaker 2: a supporting role in the first Mighty Ducks movie.
Speaker 3: So he was in The.
Speaker 2: Mighty Ducks, The Stars the Mighty Ducks. Yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 2: like those movies As a kid, I seemed I think
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 4: I think so right.
Speaker 2: The second one taught me the difference between Iceland and Greenland.
Speaker 4: You know, uh, you know, I was probably nitpicking hockey
Speaker 4: formations a little bit. The Flying V is not so good.
Speaker 4: I guess sure.
Speaker 2: I don't know much about hockey other than I like
Speaker 2: fist fights. If you're too young to have seen the
Speaker 2: Mighty Ducks movies and you don't understand what Andrew and
Speaker 2: I are talking about, they're a series. I think there's
Speaker 2: a trilogy, ultimately.
Speaker 4: Probably straight to DVD. There's a much who.
Speaker 2: Knows how many there are, right, Yeah, there's there's several
Speaker 2: of these movies, and they're all kind of about a
Speaker 2: pee wee hockey team from the Twin Cities area that
Speaker 2: isn't very good, right, It's a bad team. And then
Speaker 2: an attorney named no Ship Gordon Bombay gets sentenced to
Speaker 2: community service and winds up coaching them, and YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 2: You've seen one underdog sports team movie. You've seen them all, right,
Speaker 2: you know where this basically goes, right, It's kind of
Speaker 2: a it's this is essentially it's kind of a hockey
Speaker 2: ripoff of Bad News Bears, a little bit right. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, without without the the charisma of the raw,
Speaker 2: unbridled charisma of Walter Mathow.
Speaker 3: God but a champion.
Speaker 4: I mean it's it's Emelio Estevez, I think, right. And
Speaker 4: also yeah, in Bombay, if I recall, he's doing what
Speaker 4: he got. He got busted for trunk driving.
Speaker 2: Right right, right right, yeah, Yeah, he's gorgon trouble and
Speaker 2: he has to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, couldn't Bombay Chin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the Mighty Ducks premise was strong enough to
Speaker 2: Susay in a trilogy which no critics consider to be
Speaker 2: basically the Hockey children's hockey equivalent to the Lord of
Speaker 2: the Rings. Brock's career spanned thirteen years as an actor,
Speaker 2: and it culminated in the nineteen ninety six film First Kid,
Speaker 2: where Pierce played the President's son. During the movie's release,
Speaker 2: he got to visit the White House and even sit
Speaker 2: in President Clinton's chair in the Oval Office. Here's a
Speaker 2: photo with him and comedy legend Sindbad. Look at that
Speaker 2: pet them together. Look at that?
Speaker 4: Honestly, pretty sick.
Speaker 2: Pretty cool, Pretty cool as a kid to get to
Speaker 2: take photos in the Oval Office with fucking Sinbad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that color blue carpet.
Speaker 3: It's a nice blue carpet. Yeah.
Speaker 2: If you need a description of this photo, I would
Speaker 2: say Brock looked sort of like the Sam's Club brand
Speaker 2: Macaulay Culkin. And I don't know how to describe Simbad
Speaker 2: to you. That would be like explaining the sun to
Speaker 2: an earthworm, right. Anyway, Brock was fourteen at the time
Speaker 2: of this visit, and per an AOL interview by Sean Newman,
Speaker 2: he was quote thinking about leaving acting, determined to carve
Speaker 2: his his own path as a Hollywood producer, which is
Speaker 2: an ambitious dream to have as a fourteen year old.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, no offense. Kid, If your dream is to
Speaker 4: be a producer at fourteen, something is straight up wrong
Speaker 4: with you. You can get drugs if you stay an actor, yes,
Speaker 4: of course, But like you again, going back to Robert Evans,
Speaker 4: if you really want.
Speaker 2: The high grade cocaine, you've got to be a a
Speaker 2: big league producer.
Speaker 4: Right, saying recognizing power in that way at fourteen and
Speaker 4: wanting power only is yeah, les theopathic.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like, I get, like the producing can
Speaker 2: be a really cool job and stuff, Like I get
Speaker 2: why people want to do it. It's just weird for
Speaker 2: a fourteen year old who's already an actor to be like, no, producing, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Fourteen some time, because that means he's met producers, right,
Speaker 4: But and then like no that guy.
Speaker 2: And again, it wouldn't be weird if he was like, no,
Speaker 2: I think I want to be a director more. It's like,
Speaker 2: you've been in a couple of movies. That's enough to
Speaker 2: know that you want to be behind the camera or whatever. Producer,
Speaker 2: that's that's a weird dream.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, I find this dream noteworthy for a couple of reasons. One,
Speaker 2: it kind of it takes some pretty unmitigated goal to
Speaker 2: decide at fourteen, I think I'm done acting. It's time
Speaker 2: to run shit.
Speaker 4: Right. Yeah, that's a that's a crazy thing, And it's impossible.
Speaker 2: For me to know how accurate brocks later analysis of
Speaker 2: his own thinking was. But this sounds to me like
Speaker 2: a kid who was forced to grow up way too fast.
Speaker 3: Remember, he's a.
Speaker 2: Child actor, and I don't have enough to tail about
Speaker 2: his childhood to note that his parents push him. Was
Speaker 2: it an abusive situation? But it's rarely a good one,
Speaker 2: especially in the nineties. I think things are a little
Speaker 2: better now, but it's rarely good.
Speaker 4: The times I've worked with kid actors, I watch it
Speaker 4: and I'm like, I don't know, I don't know if
Speaker 4: this is good for them.
Speaker 2: I remember talking to a friend of mine who was like,
Speaker 2: a he's like a working class director, you know, not
Speaker 2: like a fucking giant Hollywood guy, but like a buddy
Speaker 2: of mine who as a director, who said that, no, like,
Speaker 2: you have someone on staff when you have child actors, yeah,
Speaker 2: whose job is basically to protect them from their parents,
Speaker 2: to make sure their parents.
Speaker 4: Aren't pushing them too much, right, the whole thing, Like, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's really weird. It's a weird dynamic.
Speaker 2: It's a weird dynamic. It's again, I think a lot
Speaker 2: better now, in part because of how bad shit was
Speaker 2: for a lot of child actors in the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 4: But even now, I'm just like, now that I see
Speaker 4: this and I've seen it a little bit, like when
Speaker 4: I now, I'm like, oh, I get why everyone Unsaved
Speaker 4: by the Bell was like twenty eight, Like that's actually.
Speaker 3: It makes sense human, It's probably fine.
Speaker 2: We should just like suspend our disbelief a little bit
Speaker 2: and let adult explay teenagers because the alternative.
Speaker 4: Is fuss so bad for the people.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah yeah, and for an idea of like
Speaker 2: how fast Brock has had to grow up. This is
Speaker 2: him as a talking about himself as a fourteen year
Speaker 2: old and his attitude. I took a look at my
Speaker 2: life and asked my myself, is this what I want
Speaker 2: to be doing? Is this my calling? I said no,
Speaker 2: I don't really want to be reading other people's scripts.
Speaker 2: I don't want to be a performer. I want to
Speaker 2: write my own script. I want to be the director
Speaker 2: of my own life.
Speaker 3: And I get that.
Speaker 2: It's also like most fourteen year olds aren't in a
Speaker 2: position where they're like, is this really what I want
Speaker 2: to be doing with my life? Because they're fourteen, you know,
Speaker 2: So that that says something just about where this kid's
Speaker 2: head is. You know whose head is in a good
Speaker 2: place mine? Our sponsors, Oh we're back, you know. To
Speaker 2: make Sophie happy, I have stopped accusing our sponsors, like
Speaker 2: the good people, of committing crimes against humanity, even though
Speaker 2: they did murder those kids, So you're welcome, Sophie.
Speaker 4: In self defense.
Speaker 2: In self defense, those kids were coming at them. You know,
Speaker 2: those children were complaining about being forced to pick berries
Speaker 2: all day. You know, I guess I supposed to do.
Speaker 1: I simply cannot defend, which is like, this.
Speaker 2: Is like an unfair I know, I know, I know,
Speaker 2: And we're still going to bleep the name out for
Speaker 2: all of these it's going to be great. So choice
Speaker 2: for old producer, Sophie. Here for old producer Sophie. You've
Speaker 2: got Brock's dream job, Sophie.
Speaker 1: I just want everybody to have like health insurance and
Speaker 1: like housing and like some form of financial stability.
Speaker 2: That's not what Brock wants at age fourteen. So Brock
Speaker 2: has his crisis of confidence at fourteen, but he keeps
Speaker 2: working for about a year and a half, almost two
Speaker 2: years after this point, you know, he films nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: seven's Legends of the Lost Tomb, where an adult apparently
Speaker 2: pulled a prank on him and told him he had
Speaker 2: permission to carve his name onto a pyramid while they
Speaker 2: filmed in Egypt. Brock would later admit, it almost feels
Speaker 2: kind of wrong, and it certainly was. You are not
Speaker 2: supposed to do that into the pier?
Speaker 4: He do it? Did he do that?
Speaker 3: Apparently fourteen? Again, he's fourteen.
Speaker 2: An adult told him he could, Like, it's not his
Speaker 2: there's a lot that's his fault in this story, but
Speaker 2: I won't really blame that on him. He filmed his
Speaker 2: last three movies in nineteen ninety eight. Sixteen year old
Speaker 2: Brock Pierce left the acting world entirely after this point. Now,
Speaker 2: he had become an early Internet nerd. He loves gaming.
Speaker 2: He's a big gamer as a kid, and he's you know,
Speaker 2: pretty early on the Internet train. And he's got the
Speaker 2: good sense and intuition to know that the Internet's going
Speaker 2: to play a major role in the future of entertainment.
Speaker 2: So he co founds a company, Digital Entertainment Network or DEN,
Speaker 2: with two other founders, Mark Collins Rector and Chad Shackley. DIN,
Speaker 2: as we'll call it, is most often described as a
Speaker 2: precursor or prelude to YouTube. Brock says it failed because
Speaker 2: the technology wasn't ready basically streaming video. You just couldn't
Speaker 2: stream video well enough back in the nineties. And this
Speaker 2: is you know, pretty much true, and that puts dinn in.
Speaker 2: Some people give him too much credit to be like
Speaker 2: he knew YouTube was the future before anyone else did. Now,
Speaker 2: a number of people tried. There were a few different
Speaker 2: failed YouTube precursors that just didn't quite work because again,
Speaker 2: the tech wasn't there. This was dinn was one of
Speaker 2: a number of dot com era failures, a number of
Speaker 2: companies that kind of reached for that brass ring just
Speaker 2: a few years too early. And it's worth looking at
Speaker 2: exactly what Brock and his friends wanted to create though,
Speaker 2: how they were like billing this. The company had a
Speaker 2: thirty eight page manifesto written by Collins Rector, who seems
Speaker 2: to have been the lead visionary. Part of it read
Speaker 2: the boob tube zombie television is dead. Global entertainment will
Speaker 2: be delivered over the Internet. Digital entertainment network will create
Speaker 2: the last network. And so you can see this mix
Speaker 2: of you could see that as prescient, like but also
Speaker 2: very wrong because we're still just watching TV over the
Speaker 2: internet and it didn't create the last network. There's a
Speaker 2: shitload of streaming sites. It kind of looked for a
Speaker 2: while like Netflix was becoming that. But there's so fucking
Speaker 2: many streaming sites right now, right Like, that's that's not
Speaker 2: even what happened. So Collins Rector was forty and the
Speaker 2: oldest and most experienced of the group of founders at
Speaker 2: den and this is where we get into things being
Speaker 2: very problematic, and this is maybe something that Brock has
Speaker 2: sort of been raised to not see as weird. But
Speaker 2: Collins Rector is forty years old, Chad, who is Collins
Speaker 2: Rector's roommate, is twenty four, and the two had met
Speaker 2: on bulletin boards. Whereas the La Times rights quote he
Speaker 2: Collins Rector apparently used to strike up relationships with at
Speaker 2: least two teenaged boys, right cool. The two move to
Speaker 2: get moved in together when Shackley was sixteen and Collin's
Speaker 2: Rector would have been in his mid thirties. Ew Shackley's
Speaker 2: parents seem to have thought that this was mostly a
Speaker 2: business arrangement, that they were just like you know, founders
Speaker 2: and starting a company and what we don't want to
Speaker 2: get in the way of our son. This was a
Speaker 2: sexual relationship, like this is a there's what bad I say,
Speaker 2: sexual relationship?
Speaker 3: This is rape? You know he's sixteen.
Speaker 4: The parent they.
Speaker 1: Are quote thought it was a business.
Speaker 2: Or do let your that's all I've read about it.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't.
Speaker 4: Known with a grown man.
Speaker 2: It seems like a bad judgment. I'll say that. Sorry,
Speaker 2: that's still make money. So Brock gets involved with these
Speaker 2: guys when Shackley's twenty four and Brock is seventeen. So
Speaker 2: it's seventeen. Brock is in business with a forty year
Speaker 2: old and a twenty four year old, Yeah, starting this company,
Speaker 2: and he moves into them. They've got a mansion, as
Speaker 2: we'll talk about, and he moves in with these guys. Oh,
Speaker 2: shortly before Den seeks its first round of funding. Now
Speaker 2: Den gets a lot of interest.
Speaker 3: Again, this is the.
Speaker 2: Dot com boom. Venture capitalists are throwing a shitload of
Speaker 2: money in a bunch of dumb places. It attracts about
Speaker 2: eighty eight million dollars in funding, including money from actor
Speaker 2: Fred Savage and five million dollars from former US representative
Speaker 2: Michael Huffington.
Speaker 4: What I mean, they were just everyone who had a
Speaker 4: concept like this gets five million dollars, and one of
Speaker 4: them because YouTube, that's their lot, right, exactly exactly, That
Speaker 4: is basically what happened, right, And this was one of
Speaker 4: the bad bets, although they got eighty eight million. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so this was enough to pay for this. Eighty eight
Speaker 4: million dollars pays for about a two year wild ride
Speaker 4: for Pearson his co founders. They all live together in
Speaker 4: a twelve thousand square foot mansion and Encino. They all
Speaker 4: drive sports cars. They threw these massive parties that celebrities
Speaker 4: show up to that they bill his work events. Basically, No,
Speaker 4: these parties are part of the business, right, We've got
Speaker 4: to build, you know, we got to make ourselves part
Speaker 4: of the culture in Hollywood, right, Like that's kind of
Speaker 4: the argument they're making.
Speaker 1: But you're not in Hollywood, You're in Encino.
Speaker 2: You're in Encino.
Speaker 4: Yeah, fair, this is the business model of many businesses. Yes, right,
Speaker 4: So they're not exactly they're not quite outliers really.
Speaker 3: Right, they're not.
Speaker 2: They're not out like this is this is how starts.
Speaker 2: They're not doing it in Hollywood. They're up in the valley,
Speaker 2: but they have like their big party house mansion, right,
Speaker 2: and they're arguing that, like, well.
Speaker 4: These wild parties are a lot of people.
Speaker 2: It's sexually assaulted. Are a crucial part of the business.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, prescient to their eventual business, I suppose, but right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: a warning to us maybe for the La Times quote
Speaker 4: in his manifesto, crafted to energize early employees, Collins Rectors
Speaker 4: set his sites on segments of so called generation Why
Speaker 4: that he said we're being ignored by mainstream television and movies.
Speaker 2: He identified punk rockers, extreme skaters, and hip hoppers and
Speaker 2: put gay teenagers at the top of the list. The
Speaker 2: company would build a huge market by global casting to
Speaker 2: a narrow cast audience. He vowed, now here you can
Speaker 2: see some actual insight.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's ridiculous calling them hip hoppers. That shows
Speaker 2: a deep disconnect with at least a chunk of pop culture.
Speaker 2: But pointing out that like the future is of future
Speaker 2: media is going to be catering to these like really
Speaker 2: narrow groups of fandoms of subcultures, is like, that is
Speaker 2: a legitimate insight, right. That is that did turn out
Speaker 2: to be a major part of the future of media. Right,
Speaker 2: And the fact that they seem to know like reach
Speaker 2: in because he is a forty year old man who
Speaker 2: is molesting teenage boys. It's all it's dark that he's
Speaker 2: also focusing on gay teenage stories. But it is a
Speaker 2: lot of very successful media in the twenty first century
Speaker 2: is queer people telling queer stories. Right, So there's there's
Speaker 2: a degree of understanding of where the media is going
Speaker 2: that's also mixed with deeply fucked up abusive stuff. About
Speaker 2: this guy Collins. Right, well, it's like it's it just
Speaker 2: this guy got.
Speaker 4: To where it was because his self serving thing happens
Speaker 4: to have been profitable.
Speaker 2: Right, let's talk about how he got to where he was.
Speaker 2: So Collins rector raises this eighty eight million because he
Speaker 2: spends months crisscrossing the country while while Brock and Shackley
Speaker 2: are kind of working out of the mansion, College Director
Speaker 2: spends a lot of time drumming up investment money and
Speaker 2: giving his pitch to anyone who will listen. He brags
Speaker 2: about the features that den is going to have. Users
Speaker 2: are gonna be able to pause shows just as they're
Speaker 2: watching them, Oh my god. And this is something he
Speaker 2: points out, you'll be able to if you see an
Speaker 2: actor wearing a shirt you like, you'll be able to
Speaker 2: click on the shirt on screen and it'll take you
Speaker 2: to a website where you can buy it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: And that's again that's a oh yeah, you definitely saw
Speaker 2: pieces of our horrible future, you know, like this is
Speaker 2: this is these are real. Both of these are real
Speaker 2: features that are eventually materialized in various ways. Right, But
Speaker 2: also so did a lot of people peop yes, and
Speaker 2: more to the point, these features may as well have
Speaker 2: been star trek bullshit in nineteen ninety eight, because about
Speaker 2: two percent of the country had high speed internet. You
Speaker 2: know you're not clicking a fucking T shirt. You're not
Speaker 2: streaming video most people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can say a lot of shit. This was
Speaker 4: the time when it was easy to say a lot
Speaker 4: of shit. But like, I, oh, can't build it yet.
Speaker 2: I had dial up in ninety eight, And I will
Speaker 2: tell you stream a video meant pulling up a video,
Speaker 2: pausing it, letting it fucking buffer for like forty five minutes,
Speaker 2: and then watching your four minute video. OK. So the
Speaker 2: company continued to generate buzz and investments through nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: but one thing was off. No one seemed to know
Speaker 2: where Mark Collins Rector had come from or who he
Speaker 2: really was. The La Times tried to reach out to
Speaker 2: dozens of his past business associates and even friends, all
Speaker 2: of whom either denied knowing him or aftered conflicting stories
Speaker 2: about his life. Quote Collins Rector often claimed to be
Speaker 2: in his late twenties, and associates and employees so he
Speaker 2: gave the impression that he had been a computer student
Speaker 2: at UCLA, but company filing show that he is forty,
Speaker 2: and officials at UCLA say there is no record he
Speaker 2: was ever a student there. According to records in Los
Speaker 2: Angeles Superior Court, he changed his name in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: eight from Mark Rector to Mark Collins Rector.
Speaker 1: I don't like this man very much.
Speaker 3: He's not a good guy.
Speaker 2: Not a good guy, and he's great. He's straddling the
Speaker 2: line between serial entrepreneur and con man and any as
Speaker 2: I say often, any founder, anyone who wants to start
Speaker 2: a tech company, especially in this period, has some con
Speaker 2: man jobs. Stee jobs is part con man, right, because
Speaker 2: part of what you're doing is promising and guaranteeing people
Speaker 2: they will get something that you don't know you can
Speaker 2: actually make yet Yeah, right, that is a key part
Speaker 2: of the business, and that's a bit of a con
Speaker 2: Now Jobs wound up finding people who are able to
Speaker 2: make the things that he promised happen.
Speaker 3: Generally not always well, it's it's.
Speaker 4: The successes are the ones that in hindsight found the
Speaker 4: right person like right, Like, we just have the benefit
Speaker 4: of Elon Muskle likes being on Twitter to know he's
Speaker 4: if he wasn't on Twitter, we simply wouldn't know this shit.
Speaker 2: If the company was just making products and he was
Speaker 2: never making promises or any of these like not like
Speaker 2: he would still have a lot of his aura to him.
Speaker 2: He just kept fucking quiet anyway. So Collins rector, yes,
Speaker 2: straddles the line between entrepreneur and con man. Twenty years
Speaker 2: back he had run This is because the La Times
Speaker 2: looks into him. They found that his first business venture
Speaker 2: was this telecom company in Florida called Telequest that he
Speaker 2: ran like he started like twenty years ago. One of
Speaker 2: his investors described him as a genius who was too
Speaker 2: much into instant aggrandizement. Right, basically, he was great at
Speaker 2: certain things. He was really smart, he was a visionary,
Speaker 2: but he also wanted to spend all the money on
Speaker 2: funshit like sports cars, as opposed to building a business.
Speaker 2: That business eventually failed, and he started another one called
Speaker 2: world coom Net, which sold travel packages and reached a
Speaker 2: peak valuation of about one hundred million dollars before crashing
Speaker 2: so shortly after moving in together. Because when he picks
Speaker 2: up this kid Shackley from a message board, when Shackli's
Speaker 2: like sixteen and they move into or younger, and they
Speaker 2: move in together when Shackley's sixteen and they start a
Speaker 2: business which they sell for millions of dollars and they
Speaker 2: use that to buy the mansion this Din is operated.
Speaker 1: He found this kid, did he like on a chapboard
Speaker 1: and then like yeah, yeah, the kid's parents permission and
Speaker 1: transported him over state lines.
Speaker 2: I think it's within the state of California. But yeah,
Speaker 2: his parents let him move in with this guy because
Speaker 2: they think they're starting a bit. I mean, they do
Speaker 2: start a business and they sell it and they.
Speaker 4: Make a lot of money.
Speaker 2: This is just also an abuse of sexual sites.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do see where this is going.
Speaker 2: Well, probably we don't know exactly what went on, but
Speaker 2: that's heavily insinuated. Right, So, uh, they pay high salaries
Speaker 2: Din does, and cash bonuses for their employees rather than
Speaker 2: giving them stock, which is really weird. Most startups are
Speaker 2: primarily compensating people in stock, and the idea is if
Speaker 2: the company works out, then you get rich.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It's sort of a sign that maybe they knew this
Speaker 2: wasn't going to work and they were operating a con
Speaker 2: that they're paying themselves in their friends huge salaries rather
Speaker 2: than giving a bunch of stock options up right, that's
Speaker 2: kind of a sign I know this isn't going to
Speaker 2: work out. In the first six months of nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: DIN made zero revenue and lost twenty million dollars. Most
Speaker 2: of that money goes to salaries, but some of it
Speaker 2: is spent on giant parties that brought in an a
Speaker 2: list guest roster. I want you to guess, just guessed
Speaker 2: one of the guests, one of the celebrity guests that
Speaker 2: show up at these parties. The DIN boys are throwing.
Speaker 4: What year? What year are we talking?
Speaker 2: This is like ninety nine, two thousand, ninety eight, ninety nine,
Speaker 2: two thousand, like that period.
Speaker 1: Oh god, oh right, Seinfeld, it's all the friends, every
Speaker 1: the friends.
Speaker 3: No, it's Brian Singer. It's Brian Brian Singer and.
Speaker 2: Gary Goddard, two of the allegedly sex pestious sex pests
Speaker 2: in the history of sex pestitude, right, like you read
Speaker 2: some of the allegations against Singer, who has not been
Speaker 2: convicted of anything in a court of law. I have
Speaker 2: to say, per Hollywood Reporter. And obviously the fact that
Speaker 2: they're having these parties, the fact that fucking Collin's rector
Speaker 2: is the guy he is. There's a lot of bad
Speaker 2: things happening at these parties, kind of not unique, but
Speaker 2: I will say they're bad things happening to young men.
Speaker 2: Although I say young men, they're bad things happening to
Speaker 2: young boys, which is different from some of the other
Speaker 2: guys in Hollywood. To quote from the Hollywood Reporter, A
Speaker 2: young man sued, claiming Collin's rector had started molesting him
Speaker 2: when he was thirteen. More litigation followed regarding alleged goings
Speaker 2: on at the Din mansion. One alleged victim, Alexander Burton,
Speaker 2: claimed that Colin's rector, Pierce, and Shackley had supplied him
Speaker 2: with alcohol and drugs even though he was under twenty one,
Speaker 2: and that all three men subsequently assaulted him. Another accuser
Speaker 2: was said to have written a suicide note, reading in
Speaker 2: part I can't go on. I let them use me
Speaker 2: as a sex tool. The note was discovered before a
Speaker 2: suicide attempt could be made. There were also accusations that
Speaker 2: Collin's rector would intimidate his victims by brandishing a gun.
Speaker 2: So Jesus bad and again to make it very quick.
Speaker 2: First off, for legal reasons, brock Pierce has not been
Speaker 2: convicted of anything. He has not been proven in a
Speaker 2: court of law to have abused anyone at these parties.
Speaker 2: He has just been accused of it. There was at
Speaker 2: least one case where things were settled out of court,
Speaker 2: but Collin's rector has been convicted of things and brock
Speaker 2: Pierce is not. I do want to make that clear.
Speaker 2: But it's also clear there are allegations against brock Piers
Speaker 2: during this time that he sexually assaulted at least one
Speaker 2: child that I'm aware of, right, or at least one
Speaker 2: alleged victim sorry, yeah, who was under twenty one. So
Speaker 2: you know, interpret that how you will. I know how
Speaker 2: I feel about brock Pierce, but again, hasn't been convicted
Speaker 2: of anything. So the resultant lawsuit forced Mark Collins Rector
Speaker 2: to leave the country before Din could ipo, and the
Speaker 2: company collapsed quickly after that. About a third of the
Speaker 2: employees were laid off and new management struggled to write
Speaker 2: a sinking ship. Collins, Rector, under indictment for transporting miners
Speaker 2: across state lines for sex, took Shackley and Pierce to
Speaker 2: Spain with him in August of two thousands. So the
Speaker 2: boys have now fled the country for Spain, where they're
Speaker 2: living in an ice villa, one has to assume, yeah,
Speaker 2: and probably continuing to get up to things we don't
Speaker 2: want to think about. Yeah, one would assume. Now in
Speaker 2: May of twenty twenty two their home, one may assume,
Speaker 2: because in May of twenty twenty two, their home was
Speaker 2: raided by Interpol. Like not a great sign when your
Speaker 2: house gets rated by Interpol.
Speaker 4: Wow, while you're on the run from the.
Speaker 2: Right for transporting miners across state lines. And the search
Speaker 2: of their home in Spain found weapons and thousands of
Speaker 2: individual pieces of child sex abuse material, right, thousands of
Speaker 2: photos of like naked kids being abused. Pierce has claimed
Speaker 2: he was unaware that the photos were in the house.
Speaker 2: Thousands of pieces of born I didn't know about, you know.
Speaker 2: He and Shackley were released, but their older friend was
Speaker 2: ultimately extradited to the United States for his many crimes
Speaker 2: and pled guilty to five counts of trafficking miners. And again,
Speaker 2: maybe Pierce didn't know about the photos. Legally, I have
Speaker 2: to say that, right, because he and Shackley were released,
Speaker 2: whereas fucking Collins Rector was extra diitted.
Speaker 1: Right, is that motherfucker a jail for a long time?
Speaker 2: No, a few months. He does a few months in prison,
Speaker 2: and then he flees the country because he's still rich,
Speaker 2: and he seems to still reside in Europe today. Last
Speaker 2: I heard he was there in like twenty fourteen. I
Speaker 2: don't know what he's up to right now or I hate.
Speaker 1: It, but yeah, I hate it here.
Speaker 2: Yeah it's great. It's not great, it's not good. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Planet Earth.
Speaker 4: In this time. Yes, that's that's what I mean.
Speaker 2: After this all kind of blows over, Pierce returns to
Speaker 2: the US. He settles the claims against him. He has
Speaker 2: never been ignowed. He has never acknowledged or been convicted
Speaker 2: of any wrongdoing during this period of time. But while
Speaker 2: he was in Spain before he goes back to the US,
Speaker 2: he creates his next company, Internet Gaming Entertainment or IG.
Speaker 2: E heard of this company, Andrew.
Speaker 4: I thought you were gonna say IGN. I guess now this,
Speaker 4: so did I for a second when I first started
Speaker 4: readings with No, he didn't make ign right, No he didn't.
Speaker 2: Did you ever play World of Warcraft like after it
Speaker 2: came out, like right after it came out?
Speaker 4: Uh, not as much, but like I've I've been in
Speaker 4: the room when people are playing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I was big into World of Warcraft right
Speaker 2: at for like the first two years after it came out,
Speaker 2: like release the first expansion pack basically, and if you
Speaker 2: were playing well during that period, there's a good chance
Speaker 2: you know what IgE is because this is the company
Speaker 2: that made gold farming into a thing, right, Oh, like
Speaker 2: that this is They're not. There were others obviously, but
Speaker 2: IgE was the big gold farming company, and they were
Speaker 2: the company that kind of established gold farming as an
Speaker 2: industry for the chunk of time that.
Speaker 4: It was right. Oh god.
Speaker 2: Now the goal with IgE, though, this is what's important.
Speaker 2: The company's goal was not to do what it became,
Speaker 2: which was it was basically farming gold in video games
Speaker 2: like EverQuest and World of Warcraft against the express desires
Speaker 2: and the stated rules of the developers that made those games.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: IG's actual goal was to enable and to convince the
Speaker 2: gaming industry to enable trading of real money for virtual goods,
Speaker 2: which is the thing that all basically all big games
Speaker 2: do now, right, Yeah, this was the idea IgE wanted
Speaker 2: to push. That that was controversial at this point in time.
Speaker 2: Collin's rector would later claim that he was the shadow
Speaker 2: founder of the company that he had the idea and
Speaker 2: Brock took the credit. Pierce denies this. I don't know
Speaker 2: the truth, But as the Hollywood Reporter makes clear quote,
Speaker 2: what's unclear is when Colin's Rector stopped being a part
Speaker 2: of Pierce's life. In a lawsuit against Pierce, a former
Speaker 2: partner in IgE claimed that Pierce had told him in
Speaker 2: two thousand and five that Colin's rector, then living overseas
Speaker 2: and according to the FED, still consorting with teenage boys,
Speaker 2: had been blackmailing him, threatening to damage IgE in the
Speaker 2: eyes of investors. Pierce's rep says Collin's rector never threatened
Speaker 2: to blackmail denies that Pierce ever made such a statement.
Speaker 2: Pierce separated in any business relationship with Den failed and
Speaker 2: the Internet bubble burst in two thousand. Pierce's personal relationship
Speaker 2: with Collin's rector lasted until two thousand and three. The
Speaker 2: rep says that's after Collin's Rector's indictment in two thousand
Speaker 2: and after interpoll showed up at the house in Spain
Speaker 2: in two thousand and two. But Pierce's rep says at
Speaker 2: the time of his arrest, collins rector asserted his innocence.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until Pierce received additional information concerning Colin's rector's
Speaker 2: improper actions that he separated entirely. So, you know, I
Speaker 2: don't I mean, he's still I don't think. I think
Speaker 2: he basically knew. He is very young at this point,
Speaker 2: but he has also been involved in a lot of
Speaker 2: bad behavior. He is an adult now and he right,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't have a lot of sympathy more now,
Speaker 2: I will say, eventually Collin's Rector exits Pierce's life and
Speaker 2: whatever impact he had on IgE, this is Pierce's baby
Speaker 2: for the majority of the time that the company exists, right,
Speaker 2: and once Collin's Rectors kind of out of the picture,
Speaker 2: you see, there's maybe this need in Pierce to have
Speaker 2: an older man to give him advice and professional assistance.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a good idea professionally in cases like this,
Speaker 2: but also it seems to be something Pierce maybe seeks
Speaker 2: out kind of pathologically, and in this case, the next
Speaker 2: older man that he seeks out as a mentor is
Speaker 2: Steve Bannon.
Speaker 4: Now it may said, what the fuck, it's not.
Speaker 3: Great, it's fucked up.
Speaker 2: Obviously we know who Bannon is, and heywy becomes it
Speaker 2: makes sense, right at a time. Steve is a fabulously
Speaker 2: wealthy producer. Right, he gets his start as like a
Speaker 2: banker basically, but he's he helps like make fucking Seinfeld, right,
Speaker 2: And Brock had wanted to be a producer himself. He
Speaker 2: came from Hollywood. So Bannon is the sort of authority
Speaker 2: figure Pierce had grown up listening to and respecting, right, Like,
Speaker 2: he clearly has a lot of respect for the job.
Speaker 2: So it makes sense that Bannon would be a guy
Speaker 2: that he kind of inherently trust. So by the time
Speaker 2: Bannon came to IgE, World of Warcraft was the biggest
Speaker 2: game in history, and there were millions being made selling
Speaker 2: easy access to gold and other in game resources that
Speaker 2: normally you had to grind for dozens of hours to get.
Speaker 2: IgE had set up gold farms in China using cheap
Speaker 2: workers who could spend long hours doing that in game
Speaker 2: grinding for the player. Now, this wasn't illegal, right, This
Speaker 2: is not a crime to operate a business like this,
Speaker 2: but it is a gray market. This may seem kind
Speaker 2: of hard to believe given the present realities of the
Speaker 2: video game industry, but game developers initially had a big
Speaker 2: issue with the idea of gamers using real money to
Speaker 2: buy in game assets. For one thing, if you actually
Speaker 2: care about making a good game, if that's your interest,
Speaker 2: is actually making a game that's like a quality game
Speaker 2: in its construction, letting people buy their way to have
Speaker 2: better stuff rex the game, right, Like, it kind of
Speaker 2: fucks up the ole thing, you know.
Speaker 4: Well, it's like it's like the two goals. It's like,
Speaker 4: is your actual goal as a studo as a game
Speaker 4: studio to make a good game or is it to
Speaker 4: make money? Right? Those are not necessarily rights in it.
Speaker 2: And the studios land on make money, But the game
Speaker 2: developers themselves often were very hesitant to embrace this kind
Speaker 2: of thing initially, right. And so there's also like World
Speaker 2: of Warcraft has an in game economy that Blizzard spent
Speaker 2: quite a bit of time trying to set up and
Speaker 2: make like functional. Right, Yeah, So they're also upset that
Speaker 2: this is fucking up the end game economy, so they
Speaker 2: sought to ban gold Farmers whenever they cropped up. In
Speaker 2: two thousand and five, Pierce met Bannon and brought him
Speaker 2: into IgE to act as the adult in the room.
Speaker 2: The company needed major investment money if it was going
Speaker 2: to survive and thrive, and Bannon basically Bannon Pierc's Bannon
Speaker 2: is the trusted old head who investors would because Pierce
Speaker 2: has a reputation, right, He's somebody who people have a
Speaker 2: degree of faith, and they also see really young. So
Speaker 2: if they're going to invest serious money in a company
Speaker 2: he's starting, they want to see there's a guy like
Speaker 2: Steve Bannon, you know. So that's why Bannon's there. Bannon
Speaker 2: visits the company's Hong Kong offices and he works out
Speaker 2: a deal where by Goldman Sachs, his old employer, invested
Speaker 2: sixty million dollars and he became the VP of IgE.
Speaker 2: Now it's important to note IG's pretty evil before Bannon
Speaker 2: comes on board. Not only is it kind of ruining
Speaker 2: the spirit of the games that its farmers operate in,
Speaker 2: but the whole business hinges on a lot of questionable activity.
Speaker 2: As the Washington Boast summarizes, it's.
Speaker 4: Like a digital sweatshop. Right, yeah, it is a digital sweatshop,
Speaker 4: right yeah. IgE employees in the Hong Kong office created
Speaker 4: accounts for the company's delivery avatars using the names and
Speaker 4: home addresses of unwinning US residents picked at random. In
Speaker 4: a phone directory. The company used dial up phone service
Speaker 4: that connected to servers in the United States, making it
Speaker 4: appear that they were using computers there rather than in
Speaker 4: Hong Kong. We were spending twenty thousand dollars a month
Speaker 4: on dial up service. One employee said, So that's shady.
Speaker 3: Fuck.
Speaker 4: We have zero point five versions business so insane? Oh
Speaker 4: my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of stealing people's identities for profit, you know
Speaker 2: who loves to do that besides me?
Speaker 4: That's right?
Speaker 2: Is our sponsors killing me? And we're bad? So uh.
Speaker 2: Gold farmers working for IgE in China made as little
Speaker 2: as twenty five cents an hour, laboring in cramped factories
Speaker 2: the New York Times described as virtual sweatshops. Bannon's job
Speaker 2: then was to convince old money people that this business
Speaker 2: is a gold mine. And unfortunately he has some success
Speaker 2: with this initially, but he doesn't succeed enough. He's able
Speaker 2: to get a lot of money for IgE, but the
Speaker 2: company still doesn't like work out in the long run,
Speaker 2: because he's not able to convince the people who matter most, right,
Speaker 2: the executives running game companies like Blizzard, Because ultimately, IgE
Speaker 2: can only be viable as a business if Blizzard stops
Speaker 2: banning their farmers and deleting the accounts and stuff that
Speaker 2: have all of the money that they're trying to transfer
Speaker 2: to people, and Blizzard refuses to do that. They just
Speaker 2: do not initially accept, like obviously Activision. Blizzard eventually becomes
Speaker 2: perfectly fine with in game purchases and all this shit. Right,
Speaker 2: they have no issue with these micro.
Speaker 4: I mean on any like even the philosophical people that
Speaker 4: agree with them. It's not that IG. It's not the
Speaker 4: what Ige's doing that they don't like. It's that IG's
Speaker 4: not in house, right like right.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean I think there is from people who
Speaker 2: care about the quality of the game. There's people who
Speaker 2: just shown issue with what they're doing. But right, yeah,
Speaker 2: you are correct when it comes to the.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's certainly plenty of people, even at the time
Speaker 4: at Blizzard that were like, yeah, oh my god, yeah
Speaker 4: in transections amazing, and.
Speaker 3: That's why it's it's done that these guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, IGU was ever hoping the company would like that
Speaker 2: Blizzard or whoever, would would accept there being a middleman
Speaker 2: he makes money off of like their in game world,
Speaker 2: Like that's what, Yeah, why would they be okay with this?
Speaker 2: So Blizzard constantly raids IgE. Right, They they find people's accounts,
Speaker 2: they delete them, they ban people who are buying gold.
Speaker 2: There's a bunch of lawsuits from people who bought gold
Speaker 2: and didn't get it.
Speaker 4: YadA, YadA, YadA. Causes a bunch of problems for IgE.
Speaker 4: Pierce eventually has to step down as CEO and Bannon
Speaker 4: replaces him, And it's kind of framed as like Bannon
Speaker 4: edges Pierce out, but that doesn't It seems to have
Speaker 4: been perfectly friendly, like Pierce seems to have been fine
Speaker 4: with this and understood that, like this is what's you
Speaker 4: know we need to do for the next stage of
Speaker 4: the business.
Speaker 3: Right Yeah.
Speaker 2: Ultimately IgE stops selling gold entirely, and under Bannon, the
Speaker 2: company is renamed Affinity Media Holdings and instead makes it
Speaker 2: its money running and operating a series of chat rooms
Speaker 2: and forums for gamers. So the company pivots to running
Speaker 2: places where gamers communicate and socialize. And Bannon first he
Speaker 2: sees he sees how angry these gamers had gotten at
Speaker 2: gold farming, and he starts paying attention to the social
Speaker 2: dynamics and these online communities, and it gives him a horrible,
Speaker 2: awful idea. And I'm going to quote from the Washington
Speaker 2: Post here, Bannon became fascinated with a collective power of
Speaker 2: gamers who gathered on these sites. According to journalist Joshua Green,
Speaker 2: who wrote a book Devil's Bargain about Bannon's rise in
Speaker 2: the Trump administration, selling virtual currency was highly unpopular with
Speaker 2: many gamers, and they railed against IgE in these chat rooms,
Speaker 2: putting pressure on the companies that operated the games not
Speaker 2: to partner with IgE. These guys, these rootless white males,
Speaker 2: had monster power, Bannon said, right, so he's he's starting
Speaker 2: to realize. Okay, this kind of fucked us, the power
Speaker 2: that these these inco eight groups of angry white dudes
Speaker 2: on the internet. It kind of fucked the business. Now,
Speaker 2: but you could manipulate these guys. You could tune them
Speaker 2: up and turn them on an enemy and unleash them
Speaker 2: as a weapon, and they have the ability to do
Speaker 2: some damage. Right. This is where Bannon makes that realization. Right,
Speaker 2: And I know, folks that were fifty five minutes in
Speaker 2: and I barely talked about Epstein passed the introduction. Trust me,
Speaker 2: we're coming back to him. This is all necessary groundwork
Speaker 2: for you to understand Epstein's role in all this. So
Speaker 2: Brock Pierce would later describe Steve Bannon as his right
Speaker 2: hand man for like seven years, which again suggests there
Speaker 2: were no hard feelings about Bannon replacing him a CEO
Speaker 2: of IgE. Not long after leaving the company, Brock gets
Speaker 2: involved in the world of cryptocurrency. That's kind of his
Speaker 2: next move after gaming. He founds a company called Blockchain Capital,
Speaker 2: and he is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative
Speaker 2: that he found this under right, Well, he's like a
Speaker 2: part of the Clinton Global Initiative as he creates Blockchain Capital,
Speaker 2: which again, the Clintons are very tied to Epstein, right,
Speaker 2: And that maybe part of how Jeffrey Epstein heard about
Speaker 2: Brock Pierce for the first time is because Pierce's is
Speaker 2: tied in through the Clinton Global Initiative. Now, let's perspective
Speaker 2: shift back to our old pal, Jeffrey. He had served
Speaker 2: time I'm two thousand and eight and two thousand and
Speaker 2: nine for soliciting sex from a minor, right, but he
Speaker 2: was by twenty ten a free man. He was still rich,
Speaker 2: and he was still influential, but he was something of
Speaker 2: a pariah, at least to normal people. He's not a
Speaker 2: pariah to the power elite. He's not a parrie to
Speaker 2: the people running the New York Times, to a lot
Speaker 2: of people working at the Times. He's not a prior
Speaker 2: to a lot of Harvard professors, to a lot of
Speaker 2: famous academics and scientists, to a lot of celebrities. But
Speaker 2: he's like, in public is a guy who got arrested
Speaker 2: for fucking a kid, you know, right, and this aid
Speaker 2: at him. He hates the fact that, like he had
Speaker 2: to take an l right, and that's he sees it
Speaker 2: as this kind of petty because his friends are like, man,
Speaker 2: you kind of got off light, which he did. But
Speaker 2: it really bugs him that he had to suffer any
Speaker 2: consequences at all, because he doesn't think he's done anything wrong. Now,
Speaker 2: it would take years.
Speaker 4: Evidence suggests that his peer group will not face consequences
Speaker 4: for the same behavior, so in a something.
Speaker 2: Of resigned or whatever. But yes, yeah, yeah, So it's
Speaker 2: going to take years for the reality of Epstein's conviction
Speaker 2: and what the scattered stories from his victims meant to
Speaker 2: coalesce into a widespread understanding of his crimes. Right in
Speaker 2: twenty ten, two nine ten, not a lot of people
Speaker 2: are talking about Epstein is like this vast child sex
Speaker 2: trafficker who has this like secret empire that all of
Speaker 2: the world that takes some time to build up as
Speaker 2: more stories come out, as our understanding gains brough are
Speaker 2: there's some people who who understand that about him from
Speaker 2: this stage, particularly his victims, but it's not widely known
Speaker 2: at this point.
Speaker 3: But he can.
Speaker 2: He's kind of watching as he's sitting in his Manhattan
Speaker 2: penthouse or on his private sex island's slowly over the years,
Speaker 2: watching the story come together, watching people start to become
Speaker 2: more and more aware of what he'd done, and he
Speaker 2: seems to This is I think his radicalizing the moment,
Speaker 2: because he sees a few different enemies coalescing to ruin
Speaker 2: his life. Right, and this alliance is roughly a mix
Speaker 2: between You've got your busy body feminists, right, including a
Speaker 2: lot of his victims. You've got meddlesome reporters, and of
Speaker 2: course you've got you know, the actual people that he heard, right,
Speaker 2: You've got these like feminist activists, you've got these metalsome journalists,
Speaker 2: and you've got his former victims, all of whom won't
Speaker 2: shut up.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: That's how Epstein sees this, and the answer to all
Speaker 2: of these problems, he seems to have decided was to
Speaker 2: use his position of influence to push for a change
Speaker 2: in the culture, to a culture where maybe journalists, or
Speaker 2: at least the kind of journalists who will report on
Speaker 2: this stuff, have less interest, where maybe women are more
Speaker 2: frightened to speak up, and where maybe victims have fewer rights.
Speaker 2: You know, I really do think a lot of his life. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's a cool dude. So his feelings on all of
Speaker 2: this evolved as he tried to crack down on uncomfortable
Speaker 2: reporting about his life. In a write up for the
Speaker 2: website protos cast Piance writes, in an effort to halt
Speaker 2: the decline, Epstein seeks out help from Alfred Secl aka
Speaker 2: al Scyl, a serial scammer and illusionist who's been dating
Speaker 2: Gillan Maxwell's sister Isabelle for years. Epstein tasks Secle with
Speaker 2: what he presumes to be a relatively cheap and easy
Speaker 2: job wipe the Internet of his sins. This proves to
Speaker 2: be a pipe dream, whether due to Secyl's own incompetence
Speaker 2: in greed or due to Epstein's unrepaarable reputation A twenty
Speaker 2: five thousand dollars job becomes a forty five thousand dollars
Speaker 2: job with an added luxury conference called the mind Shift Conference,
Speaker 2: hosted on Little Saint James and to be paid for
Speaker 2: by the Epstein Foundation. And this is meaningful. That's the
Speaker 2: most important thing about his connection to this con man,
Speaker 2: al Secyl, right is that Secyl says, Hey, you need
Speaker 2: to hold a conference on your Sex island about like
Speaker 2: all of the different shifts that are taking place in
Speaker 2: technology and like philosophy and psychology, right, which is going
Speaker 2: to include cryptocurrency, which is why brock Pierce is gonna
Speaker 2: get invited right now. Alsekhel is a con man, and
Speaker 2: I think kind of similar to Collins rector perhaps a
Speaker 2: bit more shameless. So the mind Shift Conference is a
Speaker 2: massive failure if judged by its stated goals. It is
Speaker 2: not go over well. Epstein, like when he starts getting
Speaker 2: involved in this, Epstein views the Mindshift Conference like, this
Speaker 2: is gonna be my TED Talks, Like I'm going to
Speaker 2: create the new TED Talks, right, the new the new
Speaker 2: TED Talks are on my private child molestation island.
Speaker 4: Right, This is where everything you need to know in
Speaker 4: all fucking Domains is gonna happen. Oh god, got It's
Speaker 4: people are so dumb.
Speaker 2: They're so dumb, and they're all the same fucking sad weirdo, right,
Speaker 2: like the idea that like, I need a Ted talk
Speaker 2: on my own that'll make people forget I'm a pedophile.
Speaker 2: So most of the panels at this conference are a bust.
Speaker 2: But one of the invited speakers is Brock Pierce. And again,
Speaker 2: maybe this connection comes because of the Clinton founday, you know,
Speaker 2: because he's Clinton is aware of this guy, and Clinton
Speaker 2: knows Jeffrey, I don't exactly know. But Brock Pierce is
Speaker 2: invited this thing and he gives a talk about crypto,
Speaker 2: and Epstein likes this. He later writes to a colleague
Speaker 2: that he found the young entrepreneur interesting, and Brock is
Speaker 2: kind of the only good thing about this conference.
Speaker 4: As Epstein is Brockett right time.
Speaker 2: Brock is in his twenties at this point, right so
Speaker 2: Epstein increasingly finds Brock's pet cause cryptocurrency intriguing. This is
Speaker 2: what gets Epstein interested in crypto, As Piance writes, previously,
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein had considered bitcoin and its ilk to be
Speaker 2: only useful for criminals. And it's unclear what about Brock's
Speaker 2: presentation changed Epstein's mind, but the fact that Jeffrey was
Speaker 2: himself now a convicted criminal may have played a Well
Speaker 2: maybe it's just that like, this is only for criminals.
Speaker 2: Oh but I'm a criminal.
Speaker 4: Now, yeah, exactly, yeah, right. It's so funny that he
Speaker 4: had the correct no, you're from money lauddering. It's from
Speaker 4: money laddering, dude.
Speaker 2: So Epstein's relationship with al Sekel fell apart after the conference.
Speaker 2: Al tried to sell a bunch of fake art and
Speaker 2: antiquities and got himself blacklisted, but Epstein's broader interest in Brock,
Speaker 2: Pierce and cryptocurrency continue after this point. In June of
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven, Epstein starts emailing with Gavin Andersson,
Speaker 2: the successor to Sushtoshi Nakamoto, the creator of bitcoin. And
Speaker 2: we don't actually know who Nakamoto really was. This is
Speaker 2: a big mystery in the world of bitcoin. But he
Speaker 2: picks Anderson to be the lead maintainer of bitcoin development
Speaker 2: after he retires in April of twenty eleven, and we
Speaker 2: don't know why he retired. Some people suggest that it's
Speaker 2: because of what Andresen was talking about doing at this
Speaker 2: point in time, which is Andresen right around the time
Speaker 2: Nakamoto retires, starts talking about how he's going to give
Speaker 2: a talk on bitcoin to the CIA, like at CIA
Speaker 2: headquarters in Langley. And this is, to say the least
Speaker 2: controversial among cryptocurrency advocates, right. The first wave of crypto
Speaker 2: enthusiasts are libertarian and they're very anti state people. This
Speaker 2: is an ideological thing for a lot of them, and
Speaker 2: they don't like the CIA very much. The fact that Andresen,
Speaker 2: basically as soon as he becomes the director of the project,
Speaker 2: after Nakamoto is like I'm going to go talk to
Speaker 2: the CIA about it is kind of giving up the
Speaker 2: game for the real money people in crypto, right, which
Speaker 2: is this isn't about escaping the state. You're not freeing
Speaker 2: yourselves from the shackles of the government. You're co opting it. Right,
Speaker 2: Crypto is as we've seen from the president. Right, We're like, no,
Speaker 2: he's the fucking Bitcoin didn't free people from the clutches
Speaker 2: of the government and the Federal Reserve. It gave the
Speaker 2: president a way to take bribes. Yeah, right, Like that's
Speaker 2: how crypto.
Speaker 4: All those fucking horrible functions, So any rich fool can
Speaker 4: do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but this is really controversial at the time, right.
Speaker 2: So Epstein emails Andrewson two days before he talks to
Speaker 2: the CIA, and he seems to have started phishing around.
Speaker 2: He's asking his contacts for Gavin's phone number? Does anyone
Speaker 2: know this guy? Does anyone have his number? A few
Speaker 2: weeks earlier, he starts by asking Bay Area socialite and
Speaker 2: professional hanger on Jason Calacanis, who is also close to
Speaker 2: Elon Musk, and eventually he gets the info and the
Speaker 2: two soon to have gotten in touch. On the twelfth,
Speaker 2: he's like emailing and he asks Rock directly for his
Speaker 2: phone number. We don't know what the two. If the
Speaker 2: two talked on the phone, we don't know what they
Speaker 2: would have talked about. But on the fourteenth, two days
Speaker 2: after he connects directly with Epstein, Andrewson speaks to the
Speaker 2: CIA at Langley. The next day, Epstein emails Anderson about
Speaker 2: meeting in person, and we don't know if they did,
Speaker 2: but we know that he declines several invitations to do so. Right,
Speaker 2: we don't know to what extent these people. We don't
Speaker 2: know if they talked on the phone. We know they're
Speaker 2: emailing a bunch, we know Epstein's trying to get in
Speaker 2: touch with them. We know Epstein talks about meeting him
Speaker 2: in person. We don't know what actually happens, and we'll
Speaker 2: talk about there's some other times when Epstein will mention
Speaker 2: andresen that make me think he and Gavin had more
Speaker 2: of a relationship than Gavin wants to admit or that
Speaker 2: is publicly known. Right, And one of the issues here
Speaker 2: is that we just have what these people emailed about.
Speaker 2: And in fact, if you search through variations of like
Speaker 2: not for email or like you know, for phone only
Speaker 2: or stuff like that in the Epstein files, you'll find
Speaker 2: them Epstein periodically being like, hey, we got to take
Speaker 2: this offline, Like this isn't in person conversation, this is
Speaker 2: something we got to talk about on the phone. So
Speaker 2: the fact that we can't prove via the emails that
Speaker 2: Epstein and Gavin were connecting or what they were talking about,
Speaker 2: doesn't mean they weren't right because a lot of this
Speaker 2: stuff is just kind of off the record. But we
Speaker 2: know that Epstein was working hard to be in contact
Speaker 2: with them, and that they had the potential to be
Speaker 2: in contact and that Epstein talks about Gavin as if
Speaker 2: they were in contact at other points, right, So that's
Speaker 2: what I can say, whatever the two discussed, if they
Speaker 2: discussed anything. Epstein plunges ahead into the world of cryptocurrency.
Speaker 2: After this point, he continues talking with Brock Pierce as well.
Speaker 2: The two met repeatedly in person in two thousand and one,
Speaker 2: and Epstein offers Pierce financial advice. Brock eventually comes to
Speaker 2: him and admits that he hasn't paid his taxes in years,
Speaker 2: and Epstein helps him sort that out. Their friendship continues
Speaker 2: into the spring of twenty twelve, which is the first
Speaker 2: time that we have a record of Epstein providing girls
Speaker 2: to Brock Pierce, and you can see the email Shane
Speaker 2: up on the website. It starts with Jeffrey Epstein saying
Speaker 2: victim name and victim name are alone in LA. I
Speaker 2: had to leave. Please assist leave your girlfriend home, and
Speaker 2: then a large redacted section of the email, and Brock responds,
Speaker 2: will do broke up with the girlfriend last night, so
Speaker 2: that won't be a problem, best regards Brock, to which
Speaker 2: Epstein responds, call me a little later, and then Brock
Speaker 2: replies the next day, I had a great time with
Speaker 2: the girls. Hope they had fun too. So we know
Speaker 2: at this point, and you know, I might say, if
Speaker 2: this was any other group of people, while girls sometimes
Speaker 2: people refer to adult women that way, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to assume that here. I'm not going to assume these
Speaker 2: are not literal girls. Because it's Jeffrey Epstein, you know,
Speaker 2: youw and Epstein's relationship with Brock and his interest in
Speaker 2: bitcoin are only going to expand from this point on,
Speaker 2: and both are going to bring him to the orbit
Speaker 2: of several major figures on the New Right, including Steve Bannon,
Speaker 2: and we'll talk about all that and much more in
Speaker 2: part two. I know there wasn't as much Epstein as
Speaker 2: you may have expected. I mean, we got a bit,
Speaker 2: a good bit at the beginning. In the end, there's
Speaker 2: a lot you have to hear about Brock Pierce first
Speaker 2: to understand why all this matters.
Speaker 4: The reason people tune in is for backstory. You know,
Speaker 4: you find the ship that I'm like, yeah, that's the pod.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Somehowell did in fact come up, which was incredible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, good for her.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, well you got any pluggables to plug?
Speaker 4: Oh? I don't know, making a show called Starter Trek
Speaker 4: on our premium sit suboptimal podcast. I saw you were
Speaker 4: watching a little bit of Starfleet Academy Robert Couple. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: but my my cost Tony Newsom's a writer on.
Speaker 2: That and Ship right right right, Yeah, I love Tonni Yeah.
Speaker 4: Beckett Peckett Mariner on lower Decks, so yeah, she's We're
Speaker 4: watching Star Trek episodes and I have seen a bunch,
Speaker 4: but I don't know nearly as much as hers, so
Speaker 4: I'm I'm no.
Speaker 2: There's very few people involved in making Star Trek that
Speaker 2: I feel like, really no Star Trek, and Toni is
Speaker 2: one of them.
Speaker 3: Tony really no Star Trek. Wild.
Speaker 2: I've got a thing to plug before we go out here.
Speaker 2: I met with just somebody last night when I was
Speaker 2: out at a bar who told me about a local
Speaker 2: Portland charity called the Artist Mentorship Program aka AMP, which
Speaker 2: supports youth experiencing homelessness and has done so for over
Speaker 2: thirty years. It serves young people aged fifteen to twenty
Speaker 2: five and provides essential supplies and job training, with music
Speaker 2: and art programs at the heart of its work. If
Speaker 2: you'd like to support or learn more about AMP, you
Speaker 2: can go to amppdx dot org. That's amppdx dot org.
Speaker 2: It's good cause check them out.
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